 My number one recommendation to all new (and old) fediverse server administrators is: make your registrations closed, however your software allows for it. For Mastodon I think "registration with a review step" is the minimum level you should be locked down. Open-registration instances are 1) going to get overwhelmed with computing needs 46 comments
@darius I actually want more people as opposed to less right now, especially after I learned that sadly boost/favorite counts aren't federated (so no explore page ๐ข) I guess the fact that it is a silly vegan instance doesn't help @visne I think you will ultimately end up regretting letting in people without first reviewing them, though the temporary boost is always nice @darius Yeah, I understand. How is the explore page with your 100 users? Is it somewhat similar to the explore pages of larger instances like mastodon.social? Interested in hearing your opinion about https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/11339 @visne I actually have the explore page turned off because none of my users want "trending" type content! We mostly talk to each other and then follow people who we like in the outside world. To be clear: the more your users get followed by people from the fediverse, the more rich your Explore page and Federated timelines will become. So it's not just about number of users, but how connected they are to the rest of the network. @darius I understand not wanting trending type content, and my preference is still to look at my home feed of course, but I like having an explore page to find new people to follow, perhaps interested in topics other than the topics the people I follow are boosting. Regarding the second part, I was under the impression that posts become trending with amount of boosts/favorites, and since we only have a few users + favorites arent federated, the explore page will stay empty for a long time. @visne yeah I get that. Do you know about relays? They are basically a way for you to subscribe to a source of further information about the fediverse so your server in some ways ingests information more like a bigger server. Info here: https://joinfediverse.wiki/index.php?title=Fediverse_relays&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop @darius Yep, I've already enabled a bunch of them. I think theres a few on that page I haven't added. Is there any harm in just adding as many relays as you can find?   @chad thoughts on this? I know mstdn.ca has had incredible growth over the last week. Is it becoming problematic so far?  @gaba make sure you have cron jobs running that clean up "orphan" media and also remote media older than N days (14 is default, 7 is nice though) @darius I know Iโm playing with fire keeping registrations open for now, but plan on shutting the door quickly as soon as I see any of those three things happening. And switching to invite/review only after 1000 users no matter what. But this post is definitely making me rethink that approach! @darius Decided it's too much fire to play with. Switching to the review-required mode. Thank you for the heads up. #mastoadmin This is good advice. If your local timeline feed is overwhelming for people, you got too big. I think a long-term solution would also require a moderation option that forces an instance's public posts to be unlisted from the federated timeline, to make the firehose more manageable. Not quite like the "neighborhood timeline" you had in mind, but close. Apparently silence and no-media go a lot further than that. #mastoadmin @darius wait, you can set an instance to let anyone create an account immediately, with no mod/admin review at all!?? :oh_no:โ :blob_cat_oh_no:โ ๐จ @darius i am amazed all of fedi is not inundated with spam like some old abandoned 2000-era forum @arachnomyrmex there's a lot of that out there but then those servers get blocked pretty fast and then they have no reach and then the people running them stop running them  It never before occurred to me how much this has in common with the original wiki security model, which elevates detection & mitigation over exclusionary prevention  @darius agreed. I tried open for a while and at some point had to delete blocks of spam accounts every day. Really badly done so easy to spot but annoying nevertheless. Then I switched to invite only. No problems ever since. @darius I have been trying to figure out ways to do this within discord as well. Even though discord is generally centralized there are many features within that allows server owners to create a 'review' process before allowing entry within a server. Things such as , accept these rules , write an introduction, and include a special character within your intro are a few examples of what I have seen. How in-depth do you believe a review process should be? It really depends on the goal of the group @darius 100% agree. I've been vetting accounts since I started this instance in 2018 and the amount of robots I've seen is scary. to think that all those robots and strange accounts just walk right in on the larger instances is kinda scary. and we've already had mastodon.social blacklisted by some AV vendor because someone used their profile for C&C. so it's just a ticking time bomb.   @darius I've never tried running #Mastodon. I once tried running #MediaWiki and was absolutely swamped with #spam account creation. The server side is a dark art.   @darius It's going to be fascinating to see what happens to instances like @toot.community which in 24 hours went from 0 to 15k users. An mid-sized town of people who have nothing in common apart from having woken up to the news of Mastodon on that day, and found it as the only option in the official signup process. @darius it largely depends on your goals with Mastodon. I've heard many people wanting to migrate here from Twitter due to the...new CEO. It's a huge opportunity to popularize the Fediverse and turning off open registration turns them away. For me, this was the only remotely relevant instance where I could register and that's not good. Then again, every community has the right and interest to defend itself. @smicur yes but consider: letting 5000 people sign up and then having your server crash and burn either technically or socially means you have 5000 people who come away from that thinking federation doesn't really work |
Gregory's Server
@darius This is why dosgame.club is invite-only. We're a very small crew and can't guarantee to be online 24/7. Our server capacity is limited and tbh we don't want random weirdos who we don't even know.